Welded
by pigeonattack
Summary: Uh oh. SOMEONE has PROCRASTINATED. Usually, this is a very bad thing. This time, however...


**This is my first work of fanfiction (yay!), but I'm not giving you any "first fic so be nice" crap. That is all. :D**

**xxxxx**

"Otto, where's the screwdriver?" Laura demanded, scanning the assortment of tools and not-yet-completely-assembled-and-therefore-random-looking metal bits and pieces scattered on the workbench in front of her.

The better part of a minute passed before the spiky-haired Alpha at the front of the classroom turned away from the equations and diagrams on the Smartboard. "Huh?"

"Screwdriver. Where."

"Oh. I don't know. You find it. I'm busy." Otto went back to staring at a depiction of a machine part resembling a stereotypical ice cream cone, minus the cherry. Though Laura was sorely tempted to draw one, right on top.

"Oh, yes. Drawing ice cream is way more important than, say, actually putting together the project," she muttered as she stood up to hunt down the screwdriver. "You know, you're starting to make me wish I teamed up with Shelby and Wing instead. They finished two days ago, and they'll probably pull off a passing grade."

Of course, she was only venting frustration over the misplacement of her electromagnetic micro screwdriver, which Shelby had nicked from a hapless tech streamer in exchange for a month's Political Corruption homework. Laura didn't mind letting Shelby copy her answers for a whole month. Political Corruption was, in her opinion, one of their easiest subjects. The tech stream's privilege of getting to bring Professor Pike's favorite toys was one thing she wished she had, although he often made exceptions for two particular Alphas. In fact, as Laura scanned the room for her lost tool, she wondered why she was an Alpha at all. What she'd accomplished to get into H.I.V.E. didn't exactly mark her as a super villain of tomorrow. No, it was more of a geeky thing. That wasn't to say she didn't enjoy Alpha-hood. She'd made some great friends within the stream, and the fact that they were all Alphas meant that they shared most of their classes.

Laura would never settle for a passing grade at the Tech Fair. Nor would Otto. They both had joined forces to ensure that they would go down in H.I.V.E. history as the first ever winners of the newly established competition, which also happened to count for a third of every student's Tech grade. Of course, winning also meant a shiny obsidian trophy (with gold lettering) and unbeatable bragging rights ("among geeks! How prestigious!" Shelby had gushed when Laura mentioned the fame).

After scouring every corner, Laura resolved to temporarily give up. She made her way to the front of the room, where Otto was still staring at the Ice cream diagram.

"That angle is hardly aesthetic," she noted.

Otto frowned. "I was aiming for more function than form-"

"They say you should always win with style." She erased the cone part of the ice cream thingy and adjusted the angle.

Otto eyed her warily. "Has Shelby been getting to you?"

"Nope. Nero."

Her friend looked confused for a moment, then remembered. "Oh, yeah. That was one of his first lessons."

"Uh huh." Laura finished her adjustment, then moved further down the board. She remembered something else that had happened that day. Something that had happened in this very room. A tinge of pink crept steadily into her cheeks, and she immediately berated herself for acting like some romantic idiot from one of the romance novels Shelby was constantly reading on the Internet- without Nero's permission, of course. Time to move her mind someplace else. "Where's the moderator? I don't see it anywhere. How the grappler course could you forget the moderator?"

"How could someone forget to build the walls of a house?" Otto said irritatedly. "It's right there. And there. And there." He gestured to three places on the Smartboard.

Laura frowned for a moment, before comprehension dawned on her face. Then she laughed. "You should have labeled it. Looks like C4 molded around a soda can. I was wondering why you threw in some C4 when we agreed to use nuclear power."

Otto rolled his eyes, though with a slight grin, as he scrawled "moderator" and fuel- U235 where necessary. "Happy?"

"Very. You done with those doodles yet? I could really use some help if we want to pull this nuclear blaster out of sci-fi and into reality before the professor arrives at six. He said we could use this room, but might not be too happy if he finds out we stayed up all night."

"I'm pretty sure we can get done in three hours."

Laura yawned. "Or less. Hopefully. We really shouldn't have procrastinated."

"Well, it was your idea to check out the library's new shipment of books."

"But you _insisted_ on reading all of them."

"But _you_ didn't have to. I finished in half an hour, but you just sat there, slowly turning each—" Otto snapped his mouth shut, slightly too late. Both of them had frozen, staring at each other. He'd gone too far.

"Well, Mr. Genius, not everyone has a supercomputer brain, you know," Laura snarled, storming back to her workbench and leaving Otto wide eyed. Laura fairly glowed with fury as she snatched up some metal and a hammer, causing Otto to flinch slightly. He should have remembered, she thought to herself. He shouldn't have gone there, after last time, when she'd flown to her dorm room and screamed into a pillow for hours. She knew it wasn't his fault that he was… _enhanced_, but she hated the fact that no matter how gifted she was or how much she studied, her abilities would never compare to his. She probably worked twice as hard to keep up. It was absolutely unfair, and even the slightest reminder of that could set her off. With slightly more force than absolutely necessary, Laura pounded the flat sheets of metal into the desired shapes, yanked down her mask, turned on the torch, and fused the two sheets together. Two halves of metal, welded by fire. Laura stopped short. Turning off her torch, she regarded the piece with newfound disgust. The offending metal was hurled across the room to the scrap heap.

Lately, it was as if there was a little Shelby in her head, pulling symbolism from everything and sticking in little thoughts here and there. Like the two pieces of metal, fused together by a common goal, and a _lot_ of violence. A few years ago, if someone had told her they were experiencing crazy notions from a little voice in their head, she would've told them to see a therapist. Now, being slightly more mature, she was seriously starting to wonder if that voice was her own. It'd started sounding like her, thought the topics were still Shelby-ish. She was quite sure it wasn't, like, the seed of a homicidal supercomputer. For example.

As she started hammering another sheet of metal for the casing, she saw someone sit down next to her in her peripheral vision. She fired up a torch an started welding something-or-another, but didn't look up. Otto quietly pulled some gloves onto his hands and started working with the fuel block. Two minutes later, he gave a small cough.

"Um, Laura? I'm done with the adjustments…"

No response. Although she did glare at the metal in her hands a bit more intensely.

Otto suddenly wished he hadn't approached her while she was wielding a white-hot torch.

"Er, I'm really sorry. Just so you know, I really don't like the fact that I'm… altered, either. So…"

"Yes, you've made that clear on multiple occasions," Laura snapped. "It's not just hard for you, you know. It's- it's so unfair for the rest of us!" Her tools dropped with a clatter. "No matter how hard I try, how much I read, I'll never be as smart as you are!" Her head fell into her arms, crossed on the table. She choked down a small lump.

There was a silence. A long, awful silence, during which Otto stared, shocked. Neither moved a muscle.

Laura felt a tentative hand on her shoulder, and lifted her head just enough to glare at him out of the corner of her eyes.

"I didn't know that you… thought those… things." Otto whispered.

Laura muttered something about oblivion and clones, but made no other movements.

Otto bit his lip. "Laura, I… I really wish I could be half as naturally intelligent as you are. You're… a… a genius. A _natural_ genius, unlike…me. I'm more… artificial." Then he realized that that comment might be perceived as another complaint. "Er, I'm sorry if…" His voice trailed off as Laura looked up, scowling. And bonked lightly the surprised Albino on the head with the hammer she was conveniently still holding.

"Now you're making me feel bad, Otto. Sorry if I overreacted a bit, which I probably did. It's just… you know."

Otto nodded, feeling considerably relieved. He hadn't expected it to be so…well, not exactly _easy_, but fast. Last time, she'd skipped dinner and had been moody the whole next day. Plus, he couldn't stand seeing her so upset. Any of his friends, for that matter, but mostly…

He didn't allow himself to finish that thought. Last time his mind had wandered somewhere along those lines, he'd been quite frightened and confused.

"Let's just finish this project."

Laura nodded, pulling her mask back down. "Yeah."

The next hour was spent in silence, as both worked together on the weapon, occasionally consulting the board for modifications. Slowly, it came to actually resemble a weapon, and a scary one at that. Laura (who'd apparently recovered in an hour to her normal self) triumphantly held aloft the final piece of metal before welding it to the gun. Exhaustedly, she pulled up her mask and slapped Otto's waiting high five. "Should we clean up?"

Otto pretended to think about it. "Nah."

"Come on, Otto. It's not that much."

He heaved a melodramatic sigh, but stood to help her return the room to its original state.

xxxxx

The walk back to their dorms was uneventful. Not that either of them expected otherwise; everyone was asleep at this ungodly hour. Except maybe Franz, who was known to seek din-fast ("It is being necessary to sustain myself through the night"). Anyways, any issues would be quickly apprehended with the nifty weapon in Otto's backpack. However, Laura couldn't help but notice the troubled look on his face as they stepped out of the elevator and into the corridor leading to their dorms.

"What's wrong, Otto?"

He glanced at her once, then back at the floor. "Can't say. You'd just get blow up again."

Her eyes narrowed, but she sighed. "Just tell me. I promise I won't… _blow up_, as you so eloquently put it. Really."

"Well, taking the elevator… and it being quiet enough for me to think…just brought to my mind…" Otto took a breath. "I can't get over the fact that I'm really just someone else's imprint. A shadow."

"A shadow?" Laura echoed exasperatedly, stopping in her tracks. They'd reached the girls' room. She pressed her palm against the sensor. "How many times do we have go through this with you? Don't you dare say that again, because I _hate_ it when you say things like that about yourself. You're an incredible person. You know the one big difference between you and Number One? _He_ probably never had any friends, anyone he cared about. Whereas you…"

She started feeling a blush rise to her cheeks, but she rambled on, even though the door was now open and rather insistently flashing an LED for her to enter. "Not only do you have friends, you're _so damn loyal_ to the people you care about. You mean so much to all of us, especially…" She gulped. It was now or never. "…me."

And before he could process anything, Laura grabbed his shoulders and smashed her mouth against his, eyes resolutely squeezed tightly shut. Had they been open, she might have seen Otto's eyes as wide as saucers.

Just as quickly, Laura pulled away and darted through the door, right as it slid closed. Immediately, Shelby sat bolt upright in bed, grinning gleefully.

"I saw that, Brand."

xxxxx

Otto probably would have stood there all night, grinning like an idiot he's not, had Franz not come ambling by, back from his excursion to some snack machine.

"Hello, Otto. What are you doing? It is being very late, _ja_?" He paused, noticing Otto's look and grinning knowingly. "Ah, I know that expression. Who is being that special girl?"

Otto shook himself to the present. "What? How do you—"

"Oh, Otto, do not be kidding me. Some of us actually had lives before H.I.V.E., you are knowing. So, who was the girl that got to spend a _very_ late night with Otto?" Franz wiggled his eyebrows.

Time for an evasion. "Er, Franz, speaking of how late it is, I really ought to be getting some sleep. We uh, have exams tomorrow."

"Exams? I am not being aware of any exams."

"You forgot? You didn't study? That's terrible, Franz. Well, good night!" Otto slipped into his room, leaving a very worried-looking Franz.

As Otto snuggled into bed, he felt happier than he had in ages. Perhaps it was the fact that he no longer had the Tech Fair project hanging over his head. Or maybe it was… the other thing.

FIN.

xxxxx

**WOOOOT!**

**My first evah ficcie turned out to be a useless bit of fluff. YIPPIE!**

**I hope you found it mildly entertaining. Maybe it made you feel all fuzzy inside, or somethin' cliché like that. That's the best a fluff writer (my current status) can wish for.**

**If I feel like it, or if the demand is high enough, I'll make this a two-shot, adding a chapter about the actual tech fair. Or maybe not. I think this is a rather nice place to end. Perhaps I should just leave you to your assumptions about what happens next.**

**Please **_**do**_** review. I'll respond to all signed reviews. Pigeon's promise.**

**Love ya!**

**:)pigeonattack**


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